Lose Hate Not Weight | Virgie Tovar | TEDxSoMa

Fat shaming is one of the last bastions of unchecked bias in this country. As the weight-loss industry continues to grow, so too do rates of eating disorders, body dysmorphia and food anxiety. Is this what a healthy nation looks like? Virgie Tovar, fat activist and recovering dieter, advocates hate loss over weight loss. Rather than spending our lives waiting for our elusive “goal weight”, let's start living and loving ourselves fully right now. Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the founder of Babecamp, a 4-week online course designed to help women who are ready to break up with diet culture. She pens two weekly columns and edited the ground-breaking anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press, November 2012) and will be publishing a forthcoming book of nonfiction (Feminist Press, Spring 2018). Tovar holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender, and taught Female Sexuality at UC Berkeley. She went onto host "The Virgie Show" (CBS Radio) in San Francisco, and was a plus-size style writer for BuzzFeed. Tovar lives in San Francisco and offers workshops and lectures nationwide. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx